BR writes about the effect of World War I on him. "It is a challenge to one's belief and hopes, an assault upon one's reason, and a call to courage and independence." He admires President Woodrow Wilson and hopes he will play a prominent role in peace talks when the war ends. BR finds himself "all but a disciple of Tolstoy". He is "ashamed of the blindness of former years", when war was thought too mad to be possible.

Both a handwritten transcription in pencil and a typed transcription of this letter are with the original.

The verso has remnants of glue; it may have been stuck in an album.